At St Clement's and St John's Infant School pupils are inspired to be curious about geography by investigating the world around us, exploring changes in our local, national and global environment and considering the impact of these. They will demonstrate knowledge, have an understanding of human and physical geography and use maps of different localities. 

The knowledge and skills children learn must be co-ordinated and coherent. In order to achieve this in our curriculum, we have identified the key concepts or overarching ideas within each subject. To enable the children to access them, we call these the ‘Big Ideas’. In Geography these are:

• location
• bigger world
• environment

Intent

At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, our vision is for every child to have confidence, compassion, creativity and curiosity in all areas of their learning, including Geography. We believe in every child becoming successful learners and leaders with a passion to live life to the full and change the world for the better.  Consequently, we strive to inspire a curiosity within our pupils about the world in which they live. We want our children to develop a love for geography.

We aim to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Geography; providing a broad and differentiated curriculum whilst ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills. We believe that our teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes (The 2014 National Curriculum in England).

The aim of teaching Geography at our school is:

• To develop pupils’ confidence in their knowledge about the world’s continents, countries, cities, seas and oceans as well as in their abilities to use a range of sources of geographical information.
• To develop a compassion and empathy for how others live in order to develop an awareness, respect and curiosity for different cultures and societies and the physical world around them.
• To inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover more about the world and the people that live within it. We believe that children should have opportunities to ask questions and make links, allowing them to make sense of the world around them.
• To allow all children to build on their geographical knowledge and skills in creative ways such as through inspiring topics, independent and collaborative learning opportunities, field trips and other exciting experiences.

Implementation

At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, the Early Years Framework and the National Curriculum is the core of our Geography curriculum.

Our curriculum is designed upon a base of skills and knowledge that we want the children to learn and is taught in a progressive manner throughout the whole school.

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning, teachers plan lessons from the Geography progression of skills document and deliver them through topics, which we select to excite and motivate our children.

Impact

We aim for all children to achieve age related expectations in Geography at the end of KS1 and for all children to have a secure understanding of the world around them.

The outcomes of the teaching of Geography across the school can be seen within the children’s topic books.

The assessment of Geography in KS1 is ongoing. The teachers regularly assess through marking and pupil discussions what the children have learnt. This information then informs the teachers with their planning, lesson activities and differentiation.